Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Family remembers the Hillsborough dead

Again, if you've read below, the official Liverpool team site has numerous memorials today for the 96, but there's one segment that froze me and drove home the horror of what happened and how it changed lives forever. It's called Letters From the Heart, and the team site has it posted in a few installments. Leading up to today, the club asked surviving family members to submit a few thoughts, if they wished, about the person they lost on April 15, 1989. The responses were numerous, some were extensive (like this one from the brother of Adam Spearitt, 14; scroll down to the second letter), and they are all exceedingly raw and on the very edge of human emotion. Reading only a few is as good a lesson as I can think of for anyone interested in trying to understand how someone could cope with watching a son, daughter or husband leave for a football match and never come home.

There's one I want to post here. It speaks for itself:

A letter to Philip Steele, who died aged 15 at Hillsborough, written by his motherPhilip,We watched you walk away on that lovely sunny day, not a care in the world, chatting happily with your brother. So excited because you had tickets to watch your beloved LFC in the semi-final.A wave of your hand, a smile and you were gone. How could we have known that would be your last smile to us?You brought so much sunshine into our lives and if I close my eyes and sit quietly, I can still see your lovely smile and hear your laughter.In our hearts every minute of every day.Rest in peace and God bless, precious son.Your very proud mum, Dolores